I thought that writing a detective story would be a wonderful apprenticeship because, whatever people tell you, a crime novel is not easy to write well. As I continued with my craft I became increasingly fascinated by the form and realized that you can use the formula to say something true about men and women and the society in which they live.

-Baroness
  'Series Detectives', collected in Brown and Munro (eds) Writers Writing (1993).

The detective novel is†the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on.

-Pritchett, Sir V(ictor) S(awdon)
  In the New Statesman,16 Jun.

The No.1Ladies' Detective Agency.

-Smith, Alexander McCall
  Novel title.